The present invention relates to measuring scales of the type used to make direct measurements on a reduced scale drawing. Such measurements are often employed in the building industry where blue prints are drawn to a reduced scale for use by various contractors. Such blue prints may be in a variety of scales depending on the usage and the type of blue prints, that is, for foundation prints generally of one-eighth inch to one foot scale is employed since the need for accuracy is at a minimum. For other purposes, larger scales, such as a quarter inch to one foot scale, may be employed. Even larger scales are for office planning scales, of three-quarter inch to one foot or greater may be employed.
It is common practice in planning a job such as wiring, plumbing, etc. from a blue print of a building, to make direct measurements necessary for estimating and planning the job, by use of an architectural scale to measure out the various distances directly from the blue print.
Conventional architect's scales generally have major increment markings corresponding to the foot markings in the reduced scale, and with subdividing markings intermediate the major scale markings marked with the foot designation.
These subdivision markings, however, have conventionally not been marked with numeral character markings, except in some cases where inch designations have been provided in the first major subdivision to indicate the corresponding inch designations. This requires the user to recognize the inch values corresponding to each subdivision marking, and to interpret these subdivision markings in the proper inch measurements. This requirement had led to inaccuracies due to errors in interpretation of such subdivisions, and also substantially slows the work of the user due to the mental effort required to interpret each of the subdivision markings in inches.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide such a reduced measuring scale in which such effort is not required by the user to alleviate the source of errors and to facilitate the making of direct measurements on reduced scale drawings as described.